California Biographies
Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of
the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with
its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919)
History By Paul E. Vandor
Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919
Notes: Missing+page1185-1186
Transcribed by Peggy Hooper
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
MRS. MARY F. KUCKENBAKER.� A good woman who has reared
her family to lead honored lives, is Mrs. Mary F. Kuckenbaker, the widow
of the late Charles Frederick Kuckenbaker, the well-known Laton pioneer,
and who resides at the old Kuckenbaker ranch of fifty acres five miles west
of Laton, in comparative retirement, enjoying quietly the old pioneer house
which was added to, from time to time and in happier years, to meet the
exigencies of a new country and a growing family. Her home, though simple
and old-fashioned, is very cosy, and easily reveals the presence of an experi-
enced and careful housekeeper. It was her lot to lose a noble son in the World
War, and not long ago the companion for many years of her joys and sor-
rows also passed away.
Beloved, however, by her children, of whom she has good cause to be
proud, and highly esteemed by all who know her as a neighbor and a friend,
Mrs. Kuckenbaker still has much to make her cheerful and happy.
She was born in Cedar County, Mo., about sixteen miles west of Stock-
ton, the count}' seat, of parents who came to that state from Virginia. They
pitched their tent in Cedar County, and were among its earliest settlers.
Her father was J. C. Beydler, and he married Eliza Gouchenour who came,
like himself, of German ancestry. Indeed, the grandparents of both families
came from Germany and settled in Missouri about two years before the out-
break of the Civil War, after which they moved to Illinois. This change was
necessary owing to their sympathy with the anti-slave movement. At the
close of the war, however, the}'- returned to Missouri, where the parents had
homesteaded, and there our subject grew up. While in Missouri she was
married to Mr. Kuckenbaker, a native of Germany, who was reared and
educated in Missouri, and who was only eight years old when his parents
came to America; and years after her marriage, she came, in June, 1897,
to California.
Seven of Mr. and Mrs. Kuckenbaker's children were born in Missouri,
while the two youngest were born in California. Effie Elsie Lee, the eldest,
died in Missouri when she was two years, seven months and fourteen days
old. John Noah, a rancher, married Miss Grace Sands, of Laton, and owns
a ranch near that town, and has been very successful, and having no children
of his own, he is rearing an orphan boy, known as Russell Kuckenbaker,
whom he adopted and who is now in the grammar school. George owns two
ranches west of Laton, and shares the fruits of his labors with his good wife,
who was Hattie Sands before her marriage, and is the mother of three chil-
dren � Harold, Elnora and a baby boy. Josie is the wife of Guy Whitney:
they have two children, Esther and Dorothy, and they own eighty acres near
Laton. Clyde married Alice Cummings of that town, and resides near-by,
a rancher, the father of two children. Homer and Wilbur. Crafton is a farmer
owning twenty acres and renting 200 acres of the Hancock Ranch, and he
married Amanda Bristol, by whom he has had one baby, Virginia. Lester
Emery enlisted in the service of his country, and died at the Rocky Ford
aviation school near San Diego, on March 8, 1917, unmarried, in his twenty-
first year. Isaac Nathan, nineteen years of age, works on a ranch but is
included in the honor roll of the draft. Olen Howard, the ninth and youngest
born, is seventeen years old and is at home.
It was about the beginning of this century when Mr. Kuckenbaker bought
the fifty acres which his widow now rents to a resident tenant, and which is
a part of the famous Laguna de Tache grant; and about 1912 he went to Old
Mexico and bought some 300 acres of land to which he expected to bring
his family when the revolution there had ceased. He was driven out. however,
with five hundred other Americans and arriving at Missouri, was vaccinated.
Tragic to relate, blood-poisoning set in ; his arm turned black, and he who
had so long labored as an exemplary American citizens, valuable to every
community in which he had lived and toiled, fell a victim to a disorder that
has long been a blot on North American civilization. On June 8, 1912, he
passed away, in his sixty-fifth year.
In addition to the desirable estate five miles west of Laton, and south
of the Riverdale and Laton Road, now known as Mt. Whitney Avenue. Mrs.
Kuckenbaker owns 120 acres in Cedar County, Mo., and this property is also
managed with characteristic good judgment.